English as an Indigenous Language

Menu

Shadow

Shadow: The presence of the force of darkness in the power of light, on the principle that two worlds are together at once on earth: a world of light and a world of darkness. They are identical, and together form the act of vision, or seeing, although because humans are prejudiced towards light (this has long been an argument for the presence of God and the capacity for human redemption for separating from him) the darkness often appears as a blockage in the path of the light. In fact, as any human at home in his body knows, one can find one’s way in the dark: not in absolute darkness, which is absence, but in the darkness of the earth, which is presence. To live in shadow is to be in the shade. It is the land of the dead, in a conception in which they are no less present than the living. The Yiddish concept of a Doppelgänger, or a double, present on the earth, comes from a deep understanding of shadow.